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Michelangelo's 'Moses' restored

After five years of restoration, Michelangelo's nearly 500-year-old sculpture of Moses is looking as good as new.

Restorers in Rome have been quietly working away on the majestic sculpture of a seated Moses since 1998, careful to steer clear of a heated debate over the best way to clean the sculptor's monumental "David" nude in Florence. They have now finished and an opening ceremony is scheduled for January.

"Our aim," chief restorer Antonio Forcellino said, "was to rediscover the real work of Michelangelo, first mutilated by the critics and then the builders.... When we arrived it was filthy, but little by little we have rubbed away the stains."